‘Hey Mama, welcome to the 60s!’: A conversation on 60s nostalgia in contemporary Filipino music

With inputs from Zed Bisenio and Kai Buizon

When you take a look at some of the biggest artists of the 21st century, the 60s squeeze themselves in every nook and cranny of music. Think of Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera’s “Moves Like Jagger.” Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor in “Marvin Gaye.” Even boygenius’ “Leonard Cohen.” From song titles to the instrumentation of the tracks itself, six decades later, the 60s is still alive and well. 

The 60s was an era of revolution. In America, the civil rights movement sent shockwaves throughout the nation as they battled for racial equality. The Cold War heightened tensions between the West and Russia. Former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Proxy wars were fought in countries like Vietnam, with effects of the war still being felt now. In Southeast Asia, clashes between the communists and ruling governments were felt in multiple countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Needless to say, the 60s saw incredible history-changing events that were felt all over the world.

The same can be said for the music of this era. The 60s saw a revolution and rupturing of genres. The Beatles revolutionized pop. Jimi Hendrix revolutionized rock. Bob Dylan revolutionized folk. Black Sabbath revolutionized metal. The list goes on and on. In terms of music, the 60s was a total break from what was; a 20th century renaissance in the midst of global sociopolitical turmoil. It is arguably the strongest musical revolution in the 20th century.

When we take a look at how 60s music entered the Filipino mainstream, we have to look at radio host, personality, and entrepreneur Ramon Jacinto, better known as RJ. In 1962, Jacinto started what would eventually be the legendary and influential rock and roll radio station DZRJ. However, in the 1970s, DZRJ, along with the rest of the Jacinto family’s assets, was forcibly seized by the Philippine military during the Marcos dictatorship. Due to threats of being arrested, Jacinto chose to stay in exile in the United States for 14 years.

After Marcos was ousted in 1986, the radio stations as well as other Jacinto family businesses were returned to them. Jacinto reestablished DZRJ and it became a leader on the airwaves by playing music from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It was during this time that Jacinto also set up the rock and roll music lounge and restaurant Bistro RJ (now known as RJ Bistro) in Makati. It became popular among crowds as well as provided opportunities for bands to play live.

Jacinto’s relationship (and maybe, partiality) to 60s music can be gleaned from his musical influences. In an interview with The Varsitarian around 2016, Jacinto mentions that some of his influences are, “Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, The Ventures, and The Shadows.” Elvis Presley aside, the rest of the mentioned artists more or less gained popularity in the 60s. 

Filipino society’s appreciation of the 60s doesn’t start or end with Jacinto, although he had a large part in its proliferation in a post-Marcos era.

Another institution that shares the flag in pioneering 60s music in the Philippines is the now-defunct Jingle Magazine, created by Filipino music journalist Gilbert Guillermo. 

Jingle was described by Guillermo as a “songbook-magazine,” which meant that it included sections of music reviews, feature articles, and the like; but most importantly, Jingle printed chords and lyrics to some of the most famous songs at the time.

Although it was established in 1970, the magazine—especially in its earlier issues—featured a lot of 60s songs in its song and chord book sections. The team from Jingle would transcribe the lyrics while professional  guitarists would add the chords on top of them. In the era without Ultimate Guitar or YouTube, this made 60s music even more accessible to the Filipino public. Its influence as a rock and roll magazine as well as its anti-establishment overtones made it a target for the Marcos administration, with the dictator shutting down the publication during martial law.

However, this is only part of the story. In order to fully understand the impact of the 60s, we have to compare the importation of Western 60s music in the Philippines with the types of music being created in the Philippines during the 60s.

60s Filipino music (and by extension, the 50s) is an era that predates Manila sound (which flourished and peaked in the 1970s) as well as Original Pilipino Music (OPM) which was coined by APO Hiking Society’s Danny Javier in the post Manila sound era to refer to pop music (OPM as a concept, and whether or not it is dead, is a completely different topic). While acts like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, and their peers were flourishing in different genres in the West, 60s Filipino music was primarily defined by ballads and music for film scores. Think of Pilita Corrales, Vilma Santos, Victor Wood, Ric Manrique Jr, Ruben Tagalog, and the like. This genre of music dominated the Filipino mainstream at the time, and if there were attempts to diversify it, it wasn’t as prominent compared to how different genres were gaining relatively equal popularity in the West.

Fast forward to now, and it seems that there is a revival of 60s influences across indie and mainstream Filipino bands. Whether it’s just hints or a faithful recreation of the 60s, it’s clear that 60s nostalgia is here to stay. The question now is, why?

Beatles Department

To start, I have to establish that it could be as simple as musicians having artistic influences, and it so happens that a lot of them like 60s artists. However, why there are so many of them opens a deeper conversation of how nostalgia perpetuates and manifests through music.

In the 21st century, it’s easy to go all the way back to the start of the new millenium and name bands that are clearly 60s-esque. For example, Ely Buendia has admitted openly that he is very inspired by Marvin Gaye, and this inspiration is prominent in The Eraserheads’ discography. The recurring motif in “Ang Huling El Bimbo” (the La, la, la, laaaa…) is a carbon copy of the melody in Marvin Gaye’s “You’re All I Need To Get By.”

In 2005, The Itchyworms released Noon Time Show, with references to the 60s sprinkled here and there in the record. The bouncy melody in “Akin Ka Na Lang” is reminiscent of the vocal bounce in The Zombies’ “Care of Cell 44.” Other parallels can be drawn between the two songs: the bass lines are upbeat with a happy-go-lucky sounding riff, the “ooohs,” “ahhhs,” and harmonies are prominent in both songs, and the drums have the same bounce and upbeat rhythm that complements the vocals.

The Bloomfields’ 2007 self-titled album is basically a faithful love letter to the 60s. Tracks like “Alam Mo Na Yun” and “Ale” are so clearly inspired by The Beach Boys, you can almost hear the Wilson brothers being reincarnated. Their affinity for the era is basically proven through the rest of the tracklist, which includes covers of tracks that were popular during the era such as “Girl From Ipanema,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and “Surfer Girl” to name a few. 

This nostalgia for the 60s remains strong even in the 2020s. The Pinkmen’s “Asked You To Dance” is very Beatle-esque; from the vocal melodies, the singing and harmonizing in unison, the chord progressions, all the way to the keyboard synths and riffs. Oh, Flamingo’s 2020 record Volumes has hints of the 60s sprinkled throughout. “Sunsets” features prominent 60s elements such as the vocal harmonies (La la la…) and the chord progression, especially the descending riff that is peppered throughout the song and its chorus.

It’s unclear if any of this was an intentional effort for The Itchyworms, The Bloomfields, Pinkmen, and Oh, Flamingo!. However, if it wasn’t, it still sheds more light on how 60s elements are so ingrained in our musical landscape that we can be unaware of how it influences our art. How 60s nostalgia continues to persist so strongly almost six decades later can be linked to different reasons and implications, but for this essay, I want to explore two: the unconscious or conscious desire to revisit a time of musical revolution and the possible causes and effects of how this 60s nostalgia affects the current musical landscape.

Burning Desire

As mentioned before, the 60s was a time for cultural revolution. It was through this rupturing of past conventions—whether sociopolitically or musically—that has catapulted the era’s top stars into god-like status. The Beatles have been touted as “the greatest band of all time” (debatable). Jimi Hendrix is hailed as “the greatest guitarist of all time” (generally accepted, but with some legroom to be debatable). These acts and their contemporaries are timeless, and until this day, very relevant in our social consciousness. There have been so many variations of Beatles documentaries, and multiple movies made about or influenced by the band, such as the terrible film Yesterday (2017).

These persevering perspectives are what contribute to the hold that the 60s has on contemporary music. A theory to consider is that this prominence of 60s nostalgia in 21st century Filipino music is that there is a conscious or unconscious desire to replicate that same revolutionary era six decades ago. It’s an attempt to relive the glamours and novelty that the 60s are defined by. Through DZRJ, plain Beatlemania, or Jingle, our grandparents and parents grew up already subscribing to the 60s, which could more or less explain how and what type of music succeeding generations were first exposed to. In the age of unfettered access to the Internet, this is only emphasized even more as both listeners and artists can easily retrieve performance videos, other artists, or songs from that era. The 60s is so pervasive that casual listeners or the untrained ear can immediately say: “Oh, this sounds like The Beatles” or “Oh, this sounds like The Beach Boys.”

It doesn’t matter whether or not you think other eras of music are superior, the fact of the matter is that the cultural significance of the 60s has generated an intergenerational passing down of its music, from the 60s itself to now. It makes sense that many artists are influenced by the era, and in one way or another, want to replicate its music.

Is this a bad thing? Definitely not. Being inspired and wanting to create music from those inspirations is part of an artist’s creative control. However, it still is an interesting phenomenon how so many acts are influenced by this particular decade, and whether or not it is conscious to replicate the novelty of the 60s, it still plays a part in why the 60s nostalgia cycle will continue to persist as newer generations arrive. More and more eras from the past will be looked at and revered in that same god-like and timeless pedestal, especially as time goes on.

Given the pervasiveness of the 60s, what does this overwhelming affection for nostalgia mean for the musical landscape of the 2020s? 

Moves like Jagger

We are at a point in music where most, if not, all the lines have been drawn. Genres and their subgenres have been defined. Today, you can define or put a label on any type of music. Even the genre of “experimental” is a catch-all label that, admittedly, defeats the core of creating experimental music. In the Philippines, “new” sounds are actually reminiscent of the “old”—case in point, when IV of Spades debuted, they set themselves apart from their contemporaries at the time with their 70s-80s aesthetic and funk sound. However, the 60s still plays a key role in the band’s music. In an interview with Guitar, both Zild Benitez and Blaster Silonga cite 60s artists as their influences. For Benitez, he was heavily inspired by funk bassist Jaco Pastorius. On the other end, Silonga was first influenced by Eric Clapton.

The barriers to making music have never been lower than they are now. Whether it’s open source or free softwares; affordable instruments and gear; or the advent of YouTube, Soundcloud, TikTok, and Ultimate Guitar, it’s much easier now than ever before to make and distribute music.

On the other side of the coin, the increasing accessibility of music makes it so that artists can get influences from all over the world, and from any past era. As audiences and listeners, we have full control—and with the support of algorithms—to define, deepen, and widen their music tastes.

Given this, it seems that an attempt of creating something “new” has probably been thought of, or unknowingly shared, by artists around the world. Attempts to revolutionize the elements of existing genres have been siloed into the numerous subgenres we have today—anti-folk, alternative hip hop, experimental (insert any genre), and the like. 

Today, there’s an abundance of labels that we use to describe the sounds that we hear. It’s part and parcel of human nature; humans create labels to create a point of reference. When we try to describe music (translating sounds into words) having labels makes it easier to communicate and share that musical experience without having the other person listen to the song. Labels create that sense of familiarity. That familiarity is why audiences listen to these songs, or seek out artists that create the sound that they like. In the same vein, familiarity allows for artists to “define their sound,” creating points of references for band members or collaborators to share the same understanding of music.

In the context of 60s nostalgia, these labels are where the past and present diverge. Today, many of the 60s nostalgia bands are defined (if not by the era itself,) by their 60s counterparts. Examples of this include, “This sounds like The Beatles or this sounds like The Beach Boys.” These 60s bands become part and parcel of the band’s identity. Some have hints of 60s influences in their music, while others are more faithful to the 60s formula. Compare this to bands during the 60s, where The Beatles et al were defined by themselves. Rather than being defined by their “own sound,” 60s nostalgia bands are reminiscent of an era gone by. 

The more far removed a generation is from an era of music, the more novel and mythic that era becomes. There is a novel and mythical aspect of not being able to see this artist live ever again or not hearing that band play or create new music that this new generation of listeners prefer. For many audiences, these 60s or any era’s nostalgia acts are the closest approximation to being in that era itself. For example, Zild’s music and aesthetic evokes the nostalgia of 80s-90s emo/new wave/post-punk bands. How he presents himself—very ala The Cure—is very popular among younger Gen Z audiences. The same goes for artists, where there is an intentional or unintentional desire to create music that sounds like or is heavily influenced by these eras.

Revolution 1

Why are so many bands revisiting the 60s in particular? As mentioned before, the 60s were the first complete overhaul of what music could sound like in the 20th century. The music from the 60s is one of the most timeless sounds in music in general, and is still relevant to artists and their influences today. With 60s nostalgia bands, there is a conscious or unconscious desire to replicate the revolution or glamour of the 60s.

However, this also asks the question: can we still create music that sounds “new” or novel in the 21st century if it seems that “every” type of music has already been created or defined? Like so many questions that grapple with current evolving phenomena, it’s difficult to say so right now.

Is the ultimate goal of musicianship to create something new versus self-expression, a reaction to society, or to generate a reaction from society? As much as with art, this varies. Much of the music prior to the 21st century has pushed the limits of what music could sound like—think Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, and their contemporaries. They showed that the lines of what is considered music could be crossed. Even genres that are associated with the 2020s (such as hyperpop) can be traced to the 80s.

In the 21st century, social media has given us full access to the past. These drawn lines are more emphasized than they were before. Whether or not we can cross them yet again has yet to be determined.

‘My Face Is The Front Of Shop’: Queerness, Identity, and Liberation in Hyperpop

A version of this essay with citations can be found here.

Glitchy, abrasive, noisy—these are just some of the words to describe hyperpop. Just as the name suggests, the genre pushes the limits of what “pop” can sound like. Think of high-pitched, modulated vocals; overboosted bass lines; loud and crass musical accents. Hyperpop tracks are dense in their production, which only reinforces its “hyper-” prefix.

However, beyond the musical aspects of the genre is a unique, inherently gendered, and queer space. As described by Lucy March, “Along with challenging traditional notions of genre, hyperpop serves to challenge hegemonic presumptions around the nature of identity. Hyperpop is also characterized by its propping up of marginalized identities: several of the higher-profile artists in the scene identify as transgender or gender non-binary.”

Some examples of these higher-profile artists include the late Scottish musician, SOPHIE, often referred to as the “mother of hyperpop.” Others include the genderfluid artist Dorian Electra, Ashnikko, Laura Les of 100 gecs, Rebecca Black (in her later discography), Kim Petras, and select tracks from Charli XCX’s catalog, to name a few. It is evident that the genre’s pioneering and high-profile artists are women and gender minorities (WGM). 

There is also a subgenre of hyperpop that can be described as “bimbo hyperpop”. This subgenre is characterized by hyperpop’s signature musical arrangements (such as the characterizations above), but the lyrical themes in these songs are hyperfeminine, and lean heavily into sexuality, with vocal tones that are high-pitched and “valley girl-like.” Examples include Ayesha Erotica, Slayyyter, Kim Petras, and That Kid. It can be argued that Ayesha Erotica is a pioneer of this subgenre, with a discography chock full of sexual and feminine tracks. Erotica’s most streamed track, “Literal Legend,” opens with “Hey, this is Ayesha Erotica / The world’s number one coke whore.”

What is interesting about the hyperpop space is its maximalism, and why a genre that is dense and jarring in its production attracts oppressed minorities that have been forced to make themselves smaller in society.

I do it for the girls and gays, that’s it

One of the most defining characteristics of hyperpop is its roots and references to internet culture. While many journalists started documenting the rise of hyperpop in 2020, the genre’s origins can be documented to the early 2010s, such as the establishment of A.G. Cook’s record label, PC Music. PC Music found its legs on the music streaming platform Soundcloud, uploading its first releases in 2013. Cook himself is a prominent hyperpop producer, collaborating and creating hyperpop remixes of tracks by artists like Lady Gaga, Caroline Polachek, and Rina Sawayama.

In 2020, hyperpop surged into the mainstream through TikTok. Emergent (and now prominent) songs such as 100 gecs’ “money machine,” and Ayesha Erotica’s “Nasty” became viral on the platform, with the tracks having over 93 million and 6 million streams respectively on Spotify. Spotify also created the hyperpop playlist in 2020, which contributed to the genre catapulting onto the radar of the mainstream.

However, beyond the conditions of how hyperpop was established and propagated, its musical structure lends itself to internet and digital culture. Hyperpop is electronic, and the presence of physical instruments in its tracks is scant, if not non-existent at all. It is digitally produced and mastered, allowing for the jarring, overboosted elements to shine. The genre’s inherent character to be loud and abrasive is rooted in how it is digitally created.

Hyperpop artists use internet culture to challenge social norms of gender and sexuality, and the genre’s unapologetic platforming of WGM can be analyzed through the lens of cyberfeminism, a strand of feminism that, in its broadest sense, aims to “demasculinize” technology and the internet. One of the field’s pioneers, Donna Haraway, comments on the reimagining of technology, internet, and gender as, “In the traditions of “Western” science and politics—the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other—the relation between organism and machine has been a border war.”

In the 1980s, cyberfeminists saw technology as a male-dominated space. A collective of female scholars, coders, and artists then attempted to reimagine what the internet and technology could look like: a mode of hacking “the codes of patriarchy” and a way to “escape gender online.”

While Haraway and Scott lean into the idea of the cyberspace as a utopia that abolishes gender, radical cyberfeminists purport that the textual creations on cybersites (how individuals communicate with each other on the internet and create communities) do not erase gender, but rather, “intensify its performance.” On the Internet, identity is king. The mere creation of social media accounts or a person’s online presence demands one to establish their identity—how you present yourself online (the prominence of “aesthetics”), selecting your gender, usernames, online bios, and the like. 

In the case of gender, the Internet’s ability to transcend borders to create communities nurtured the advent of both queer and feminist online communities as well as gender discourse. In the 21st century, websites such as Tumblr created a space for Gen Z and younger millennials to explore gender identity and name it, with microblogs dedicated to the “atomization of gender,” the phenomena of creating highly specific labels for almost all experiences of gender. The blog, All The Genders, All The Sexualities and similar blogs such as the now-defunct queerdictionary.tumblr.com and mogai-lexicon.tumblr.com (MOGAI, meaning Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, and Intersex) created glossaries of hyperspecific genders such as abroromantic and abrosexual, which means having “an orientation or feelings about it that constantly change and cannot be pinned down for this reason.” It is clear that the 2010s saw heightened discourse and self-discovery on the Internet among then-adolescents. The Internet’s contribution to the intensification of gender identity and expression cannot be downplayed.

How do we then marry gender’s prominence in Internet culture and hyperpop as a gendered space? As discussed earlier, hyperpop is inherently tied to the Internet. Its music proliferates in online spaces: Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, and YouTube. The Internet as a space that intensifies gender expression reinforces hyperpop as both a musical and visual experience. Hyperpop’s eccentric, visually stimulating, colorful, and epilepsy-inducing aesthetic cannot be separated from its musical texture. Hyperpop’s adjacent terms such as “glitchcore” and “digicore” only emphasize its roots in Internet culture. Just as the Internet is bloated with content, hyperpop’s maximalist structure mirrors and reproduces that same burgeoning characteristic. Moreover, the Internet’s ability to cross borders only adds to the musical influences of artists from opposite ends of the world.

Am I loud and clear

Many of hyperpop’s pioneers and prominent artists come from the West. However, today, hyperpop continues to be an emerging scene in Asia. Asian musicians are just starting to lean into the type of hyperpop as defined by its Western counterparts. Prime examples include Sobs’ frontwoman Cayenne’s solo project, which is unapologetically loud, epileptic, glitchy, and maximalist. Her recent EP, CAYENNE SLAY ERA, incorporates the same visual and musical experience of her Western contemporaries.

In the Philippines, emerging artists such as MIKASAN incorporate elements of hyperpop and the vocal stylings of bimbo hyperpop in her discography. Rapper Pette Shabu creates hip hop music, but there are influences and elements of the same maximalist aspect of hyperpop in the production. Other emerging acts include vice* who describes himself as a creator of “unapologetically feisty digicore music.” In general, hyperpop in the Philippines is still heavily linked with the electronic scene, with collectives such as Showtime Official Club and the genre of budots—a similar, maximalist, electronic genre in the Philippines that is rooted in the class conditions of the country—having their own elements of hyperpop and its density. Likewise, Cayenne’s lean discography has scant references to the femininity and gendered aspect of Western hyperpop. Her track, “Centrefold,” has one line with minor sexual undertones: “But I like it I like it I like it when you touch me there.”

Is the queer and gendered core of the genre that is prominent in its Western counterpart as prominent? It’s hard to tell as early as now, especially as the scene continues to emerge. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any. Filipino electronic and dance collectives such as That Elephant Party are explicitly LGBTQ+ spaces, and are cultivating hyperpop as they emerge. Pette Shabu’s “THE FUTURE IS TRANS” makes references to the Filipino trans experience. In the diss track, “bulbulin ka na,” she drops sexual references in certain lines, such as “Giving good head / tanggal pati dandruff” (Giving good head / Even dandruff’s removed).

Whether it’s in Southeast Asia or Asia in general, artists across different genres seem to borrow elements or are influenced by hyperpop, but have yet to create the clear delineation that Western hyperpop artists do. As the genre grows and emerges in these regions, there is an open space that is waiting to be filled; whether or not the space will be as gendered and queer as its Western parallel has yet to be clearly determined.

Immaterial girls

The core of music is the individual experience and expression, both for musicians and listeners. These individual experiences eventually grow into communities, into movements, and build the genres and subgenres that we love and recognize today. However, the discussions surrounding music and identity transcend just resonating with the music—what is unique about gendered spaces in music like hyperpop is its emancipatory dimension. In a genre that pushes and exceeds the limits of pop music through intense, abrasive, and loud instrumentation, queer people and women push their own limits and experience of gender; what it means to be “unapologetically queer and here.” It is a genre that stands against gender oppression, refusing to make itself small in the same way that WGM are forced to be in the status quo. 

What then is the importance of emancipation in music? What could this look like in the future? As we continue to analyze society’s relationship with music, there is a constant challenge to find the balance between the “universalization” aspect of music to transcend identity (meaning, to resonate with people regardless of what they identify as), but also recognizing the lived experiences it is continually shaped by.

Ultimately, hyperpop is resistance. It resists pop conventions and gender conventions, all housed in a cyberspace that cannot be held down and controlled.

Header image: Pette Shabu/Instagram; SOPHIE/Press; Cayenne/Instagram

‘I’m the problem,’: An analysis of Taylor Swift’s ‘Anti-Hero’

Within a few minutes of the worldwide premiere of Taylor Swift’s tenth studio album Midnights, the Internet already picked one of its stand-out songs: “Anti-Hero.”

Swift’s exploration into folk with folklore and evermore slowly pulled her into the group of female musicians that have come to define “sad girl music.” The themes and level of storytelling of the two records tapped into a side of the singer that few have appreciated before, touching on concepts like self-image, depressing, and of course, heartbreak. Since Swift has mainly focused on re-recording her Taylor’s Version albums since the release of the two records, many were curious to see what genre she would explore for Midnights, especially without singles that would give a peek into what the album would sound like.

What awaited fans was a return to the signature-pop sound that defined some of her most prominent albums: Red, Reputation, Lover, and especially 1989. What Midnights does differently is Swift’s unapologetic detailing of her own demons–and “Anti-Hero” is an example of what she does best: masking pain with an upbeat pop instrumental.

“Anti-Hero” is arguably a sister to folklore’s “mirrorball” and “this is me trying” but zeroes in on self-loathing. The track opens with a nod to Swift’s age and maturity, something that she’s grown to welcome in her writing. In contrast to “Nothing New” off her Red (Taylor’s Version) cut where she grapples with the fear of growing older, Swift is more retrospective in “Anti-Hero,” assessing herself after all these years. She proceeds with one of the most satisfying alliterations I’ve heard in a while: “I should not be left to my own devices / They come with prices and vices / I end up in crisis / Tale as old as time.”

The track isn’t a pity party, in fact, I argue that it oozes with the frustration, anger, and self-loathing that the singer herself described the album as. Don’t let the pop beat fool you–even with the hook that audiences latched onto “It’s me / Hi / I’m the problem / It’s me”–the track is a self-portrait of someone who sees herself as a manipulator, calling herself the villain in the grander scheme of things. This is the departure from what “mirrorball” and “this is me trying” have at its core: Swift is still the protagonist in their stories. In “Anti-Hero,” she makes a 180 turn of her persona.

However, the track is not quite Reputation, a record often referred to as her “villain era.” Reputation had Swift owning and taking delight into “being the bad guy.” In contrast, “Anti-Hero” situates itself in the middle: not the hopeful protagonist, but not the full-blown villain. She is exactly what the track’s title refers to: an imperfect hero.

There’s nothing novel about “Anti-Hero,” and Swift makes it a point to emphasize that. The point is exactly that this isn’t new. Even within the song’s narrative, she writes herself coming to a quiet acceptance with who she is and how she views herself. “Anti-Hero” is an illustration of the singer’s prison that serves as the cost of her career, that even with almost two decades in the music industry under her belt and a hardworking fanbase, “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.”

In a description for the track, Swift shared, “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized, and not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.” She is both victim and mastermind. “Anti-Hero” features a Taylor Swift conceding to the ghosts in her head, someone who refused to confront herself and focused on her career only to be forced to look at herself in the end.

Swift sits with her faults, not necessarily welcoming them but not shooing them away either. She has a drink with them, opens her door to them, in an unlikely ode to an acceptance of things being just the way they are–and to hell with it if she faces the consequences later.

‘Anyway, don’t be a stranger’: A love letter to ‘Scott Street’

There’s something magical about revisiting music you love–no matter how long it’s been, or how many times you listen to it mindlessly while cleaning–when you truly revisit a song, it always seems to take a different form.

I stumbled upon Phoebe Bridgers in late 2020, just on the cusp of a new year. Immediately, it was as if I was stuck in a trance. My room was filled to the brim with Phoebe Bridgers’ music and nothing else. It was the soundtrack of my mornings, tearfully making tea and journaling at a time when I believed that New Years Resolutions were something I could actually commit to this year (spoiler alert: I didn’t.)

There are many a Phoebe Bridgers song that I’ve cried to; I mean, she’s known for her Elliot Smith-inspired writing and emotional instrumentals. However, one song that’s always stood out to me was “Scott Street” off her debut album, Stranger in the Alps. For some, the track sticks out like a sore thumb in the album’s tracklist. It’s one of the record’s most soaring instrumentals–with a string-driven climax accented by the most random of sound effects: a bike bell, a train whistle, and a car airhorn. In the context of the entire album, it seems like it would be the perfect finale track to a generally stripped down, acoustic record. Instead, Phoebe Bridgers situates it right in the middle.

Whether or not this was intentional, or if there’s a larger-than-life reason as to why she placed it at the fifth spot, I argue that the song is one of her best. I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to perfectly encapsulate the soft pain of reminiscing. In the track’s story, Phoebe Bridgers puts audiences in the middle of a conversation with an ex-lover as they detail what’s changed since they last saw each other. In a way, she wrestles with the fact that things are no longer the same. When you dissect the lyrics, one could argue that it’s not even a conversation–she’s the one asking the questions. She prods, “What about your sister; what about the band?” and the other person just responds blankly. Then, a stark jump into a line that many quote from the song: “Do you feel ashamed when you hear my name?”

The song then builds into its unforgettable climax: a swelling of strings, Bridgers’ soft vocals layered behind the aforementioned bike bell, train whistle, and airhorn. She closes the conversation with a bittersweet goodbye: “Anyway, don’t be a stranger.”

In Scott Street, there is no promise of another conversation. Bridgers decides that maybe, the past isn’t worth clinging to. She buries this under the guise of small talk, of sisters and bands that aren’t the way they were anymore. Despite everything, she settles for a relationship just above strangers: acquaintances. Anyway, don’t be a stranger. It’s a lyrical masterclass of saying little but meaning much. Because of that, it immediately became my favorite among the tracks of her discography, and a go-to song when thinking aloud at 4 AM.

But just like most music you hyperfocus on, the magic wears off after a while. I never fully let go of Phoebe Bridgers–at this point, I was a self-confessed die-hard Phoebe Bridgers Superfan–but she took the backseat to other music I ended up enjoying and loving.

However, every once in a while, there’s a point in your life where you come crawling back. Maybe it’s two years and two exes later, and you’re sitting in a new room with furniture that’s barely a year old. But 4 AM is still 4 AM. I open Spotify, search up Stranger in the Alps, and there she is: sitting awkwardly at the fifth spot on the list like she always has. I press play and close my eyes. I say hello.

Happy birthday, Stranger in the Alps.

—

Header image: Phoebe Bridgers via YouTube

“ribs” by lorde, and an ode to the end of high school

“and i’ve never felt more alone — it feels so scary getting old.”

i “graduated” from high school this year.

while i may have not gotten the end-of-high-school-indie-movie-esque experience i envisioned in my head, i spent a large majority of my senior year counting down the “lasts”. last first day. last sportsfest. last meeting. last day. i’ve always been someone who’s pretty anxious, so thinking about “lasts” and looking forward to a very uncertain future has been the theme of many nights spent in bed wondering what the hell am i going to do with my life.

lorde’s cult-favorite hit “ribs” is an ode to those anxiety-filled nights. she was 16 when she wrote this — and wrote it about how she felt after throwing a huge, huge house party and realized she was growing up into a more “adult” world that she didn’t know anything about.

there’s no doubt that she captures that perfectly. the song is a perfect snapshot of that split-second, life-altering moment you realize that life is changing and nothing is ever going to be the same way it’s been. the people in your life are changing, your relationships with them are changing, and the whole world is changing in front of our very eyes.

and that’s terrifying.

taking in the context of 2013 pop music (think get lucky by daft punk, we can’t stop by miley cyrus, best song ever by one direction, etc.), the musicality of ribs seems almost out of place. the instrumental is a bass-laden electronic beat, deep electronic synths, and an almost ghostly chorus of vocal-like sounds harmonizing with one another. while individually they sound haunting, together they paint a full picture of teenage naivety and the fear of “growing up”. the song opens with a cacophony of voices almost sounding like they’re being cut, reversed, or scrolled through. it almost sounds like a cassette player being winded to start from the beginning. it’s a beautiful exposition into what the song wants to visualize: an almost desperate attempt to cling to the past and rewind time. then, the electronic bass drum comes in, conjuring up the image of loud music filling up the rooms of a teenage houseparty that lorde gained inspiration from. it conjures up a montage of high school naivety that seems to only happen in coming of age movies — living because we wanted to, because nothing else in the world mattered, and it’s just me, my friends, and the world for our taking. at the climax of the song, it’s almost like she’s yelling for time to stop — “i want ’em back, i want ’em back, the minds we had, the minds we had”. the backing track yells with her, lorde’s own harmonized, layered vocals hitting incredibly high notes as she laments the “end of innocence”.

while many of the lyrics in this song perfectly paint lamenting the end of adolescence, one section is a cut above the rest. as lorde’s solo bridge comes to a close, her single voice is suddenly joined by a chorus of voices singing, “it’s not enough to feel the lack, i want ’em back, i want ’em back, i want ’em”.

for me, these two lines are what drives the impact of the song home. lorde is telling us that’s it’s not just about being nostalgic with memories, it’s about wanting — yearning — for the comfort of childhood, for the comfort of high school. it’s the helpless clinging onto sand in an hourglass. it’s not just the feeling of “oh, that was a good memory” that happens after the fact, but an active clinging on to the present as it still happens.

in a lot of ways, i personally consider ribs as the soundtrack of my senior year. thinking about how everything was ending while it was still happening only further fueled the anxiety that i didn’t maximize my time while i was there. but looking back now, a lot of the memories i keep close to my heart are often things that went unplanned. sleeping over at a friend’s house. going to a live music gig. taking uncalculated risks. laughing until our ribs get tough.

on a personal level, maybe lorde was a little wrong. it’s been more than enough. high school has been more than i could ever wish for. and while i’m not too sure of how this new chapter of my life is going to end — or begin, for that matter — this song comforts me on those days.

featured image is from gab suarez. thanks for the memories, miki!

“new york” by st. vincent, and the hollow repetitiveness of loss

“well, you’re the only motherfucker in this city who can handle me.”

i stumbled upon st. vincent’s emotionally-haunting yet short ballad almost completely by accident.

on one of my (many) adventures through the youtube algorithm, i came across lorde’s performance in new york of her with jack antonoff, singing a (beautiful) medley of new york/hard feelings/liability. as a long time lorde fan, i am more than familiar with hard feelings and liability, both of which have witnessed many tears at midnight when Life Do Be Like That. new york, however, was a song i didn’t recognize. initially thinking it to be an unreleased lorde demo, i searched it up only to find out it was actually by the art-rock/pop musician, st. vincent.

admittedly, i’m not too familiar with st. vincent. i only know her from some of her extremely eccentric music videos that i saw years ago. the music video for new york doesn’t stray too far from the tree — it’s loud, flashy, colorful, extravagant. but play the music and you have an almost jarring contrast to the visuals playing on screen.

musically, new york does so much with so little. the song is 2:34 in length, features a recurring piano theme of two notes, and at its most climactic, a simple percussion beat and strings. lyrically, the chorus of “i have lost a hero / i have lost a friend / but for you, darling / i’d do it all again” coupled with “you’re the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me/can stand me/who’ll forgive me” as the punchline is liberally peppered into the song, often taking a majority of vocal time. but what it supposedly “lacks” is actually what makes the song more impactful; more meaningful.

at the core of this song is the painful recoil of loss. st. vincent mourns the loss of a lover and alludes to a failed attempt of moving on with someone new. the premise is far from original, but i believe that st. vincent captures the frustration and helplessness of leftover feelings perfectly without spoon-feeding it to its listeners. the verses that appear as unfinished, incomplete thoughts perfectly encapsulate the post-relationship mourning period filled with picking apart unanswered questions, never really getting closure, and the exhaustion of trying to rationalize everything.

but my favorite part of the story st. vincent tells is how beautifully and painfully it paints yearning. while most artists will try to explicitly describe how much they miss their lover, st. vincent uses a repetitive 4-line chorus backdropped with swelling strings to paint us a picture of how much she would give to get back together. mourning a lover and bargaining to get them back is almost never eloquently said. when you’re in the middle of hurting, it’s difficult to materialize words to convey the car crash of emotions you’re experiencing. st. vincent’s chorus is genuine and raw in its want. the fact that it’s repeated as the music swells more and more makes you almost feel the heaviness of st. vincent’s loneliness on your chest. then abruptly, the strings, percussion, and layered vocals come to a stop. then, you’re left with a haunting two-note piano melody as the song comes to a close.

the song ends softer than it starts. there’s no heart-wrenching surprise of a lyric at the end. there’s no key change, no reprise. st. vincent leaves us unresolved. it’s almost like she leaves us wanting more, which — either intentionally or coincidentally — is the exact message that the song wants to convey. whether or not that’s true, one thing’s for sure: new york stands a mile above the rest of the songs about loss and love.